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The division into elements must, in short, be abandoned,
especially in regard to Sensible Substance, known necessarily by
sense rather than by reason. We must no longer look for help in
constituent parts, since such parts will not be substances, or at
any rate not sensible substances.
Our plan must be to apprehend what is constant in stone, earth,
water and the entities which they compose- the vegetal and animal
forms, considered purely as sensibles- and to confine this
constant within a single genus. Neither Matter nor Form will thus
be overlooked, for Sensible Substance comports them; fire and
earth and the two intermediaries consist of Matter and Form,
while composite things are actually many substances in one. They
all, moreover, have that common property which distinguishes them
from other things: serving as subjects to these others, they are
never themselves present in a subject nor predicated of any other
thing. Similarly, all the characteristics which we have ascribed
to Substance find a place in this classification.
But Sensible Substance is never found apart from magnitude and
quality: how then do we proceed to separate these accidents? If
we subtract them- magnitude, figure, colour, dryness, moistness-
what is there left to be regarded as Substance itself? All the
substances under consideration are, of course, qualified.
There is, however, something in relation to which whatever turns
Substance into qualified Substance is accidental: thus, the whole
of fire is not Substance, but only a part of it- if the term
"part" be allowed.
What then can this "part" be? Matter may be suggested. But are we
actually to maintain that the particular sensible substance
consists of a conglomeration of qualities and Matter, while
Sensible Substance as a whole is merely the sum of these
coagulations in the uniform Matter, each one separately forming a
quale or a quantum or else a thing of many qualities? Is it true
to say that everything whose absence leaves subsistence
incomplete is a part of the particular substance, while all that
is accidental to the substance already existent takes independent
rank and is not submerged in the mixture which constitutes this
so-called substance?
I decline to allow that whatever combines in this way with
anything else is Substance if it helps to produce a single mass
having quantity and quality, whereas taken by itself and divorced
from this complementary function it is a quality: not everything
which composes the amalgam is Substance, but only the amalgam as
a whole.
And let no one take exception on the ground that we produce
Sensible Substance from non-substances. The whole amalgam itself
is not True Substance; it is merely an imitation of that True
Substance which has Being apart from its concomitants, these
indeed being derived from it as the possessor of True Being. In
the lower realm the case is different: the underlying ground is
sterile, and from its inability to produce fails to attain to the
status of Being; it remains a shadow, and on this shadow is
traced a sketch- the world of Appearance.
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